George Lakoff (and others) on "foodie"

[Ben Zimmer]

On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 9:31 AM, Geoffrey Steven Nathan wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2014 at 9:21 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/01/opinion/beyond-foodie-its-about-our-values.html
>> [see embedded link for the Mark Bittman op-ed at issue]
>>
>> Note that Lakoff's argument presupposes that the -ie of "foodie" is the
>> same suffix that we have in "Barbie", "baggie", "birdie", "hoodie", and
>> "selfie", but none of these are quasi-agentives the way "foodie" is, and
>> other than the -ie or -y hypocoristic for names (Barbie, Georgie,
>> Billy,..), the others are diminutives for non-human objects. You'd
>> think a more relevant example might be "hippie", "Yippee", or even
>> "commie", where an Xie is someone adhering to the X philosophy or an
>> aficionado/true-believer in X. (There are probably other examples I'm
>> not remembering. Anyone else?) These may well be trivializing, but
>> it's not just the -ie form that's responsible for trivializing and
>> pejoration; we've spent some time knocking around the -er of "truther",
>> "birther", etc. for 'adherent of the X conspiracy', also . I agree with
>> the following letter suggesting that "foodist" might be the best choice,
>> unless it's too reminiscent of "nudist" (given the rhyme) or
>> "naturist".
>
> I agree with Larry's intuition that the -ie suffix is not the hypocoristic suffix
> in 'Suzie'. It strikes me as more like 'Yalie'--with some kind of enthusiast
> connotation. Like Larry I can't think of other examples, but COCA probably
> has some. Don't have time right now to construct the right kind of search.

For "X-ie" = 'enthusiast of X', the example that comes most readily to
mind is "Trekkie". (Of course, Trekkies themselves prefer "Trekker".)

Steven Poole complained about the "cloying, infantile cuteness" of
"foodie" a couple of years ago in his book "You Aren't What You Eat",
excerpted here:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/28/lets-start-foodie-backlash

Poole too prefers "foodist", which he says was "used from the late
19th century for hucksters selling fad diets (which is quite apt)." He
sardonically describes a foodist as one who "operates under the
prejudices of a governing ideology, viewing the whole world through
the grease-smeared lenses of a militant eater."

--bgz


-- 
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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